Discs of Fury

One of the hardest tasks that I have ever undertaken in my life is trying to learn how to throw a Frisbee. It is, for me, unbelievably difficult to learn how to throw it with both distance and accuracy. I have both for about 15 feet and then after that my accuracy drops considerably. I watch so many of my friends effortlessly toss the disc, almost as if with their minds, to travel hundreds of feet with perfect balance and evenness, right to their intended target. For me however, I often miss targets that are 20 feet away.

I won’t go into the suspected reasons, or theories (almost all of my friends have a different explanation as to what I’m doing wrong) for why I have so much trouble with those little round things, it’s enough for this post to say that I have immense amounts of trouble with them and leave it at that.

My inability to make significant process throwing the Frisbee has led to significant displays of visual frustration and borderline rage on my part. Sure it “doesn’t matter”, and it’s “not a big deal”, but as a hyper-competitive person, whenever I see a bunch of people that I know doing something well, I want to do it just as well, or better, even if it is something as inconsequential as the ability to hurl a disc for more than 30 feet in the same direction.

So of course the embarrassment of my often frustrated actions only adds to the angst surrounding this constant struggle between man and disc. It seems to bring out the worst in me, a category previously reserved for Bowling. But, a conversation that I had with a good friend this past week helped me come to the conclusion that my struggle with the inanimate plastic disc has not been completely in vain. I am learning an important lesson though it.

I’ve often thought that I was learning a number of lessons during my now two-year-long endeavor, “life sucks”, “you can’t be good at everything”, “you suck at throwing the Frisbee and always will”…but none of those were the real lesson. The real lesson has always been one that I have had a difficult time learning and grasping. The lesson that there are many areas in my life where purely relying on myself only leads to fruitless results and frustration. Ultimately (no pun intended), I must be surrounded by, and immersed in community, reaching beyond myself to seek help in growing in all areas of life, otherwise I will stagnate and become frustrated, wondering why I am still in the same place, and situation.

I began to consider this on a cool night late last semester. I was warming up with some of my best friends before our Thursday night ritual of midnight Ultimate Frisbee. I enjoy Ultimate much more than throwing the Frisbee normally, or playing disc golf, because you can actually have a big impact in the game without ever having to toss the Frisbee more than 20 feet.This night I was having a particularly hard time remembering the 20 or so ways that I’ve been told are the correct way to throw the Frisbee. I have always lamented these reasons because I have an extremely difficult time transmitting verbal instructions into physical actions. The way I learn doesn’t facilitate that. I learn very differently than people who seem more athletically inclined than I am.

This night however, one of my good friends, Derek Eacho, got it. Agreeing with my protests that I needed to be physically shown how to throw the disc, not just watch someone throw it while they say something that I completely don’t understand to explain what they just somehow did. He physically moved my arms in the correct throwing motion and for the first time ever I actually significantly improved at throwing the Frisbee after someone else’s instructions. And there is my lesson, it was not until I had submitted to have someone else physically help me throw it that I finally grew in my ability to do so. I feel that is an important thing that I need to apply to my everyday life. Because of my fallen and imperfect nature, anything that I try to do on my own is ultimately flawed and doomed to fail. However, when we seek after God, we have less room for error, and those flaws are less prominent, when we do so in community. It is in community that we are best suited for growth. Fellowship and accountability are two of God's greatest gifts to mankind, I think. No, I'm sure. They're so important.

If this is the only major less I learn from my months of often extreme frustration with the disc, then I will consider it to be worth it. This is a huge thing that I need to learn. I've got to end the belief that I can acheieve anything on my own and I don't need the help of others. It's just not true and it's gotten me into a lot of holes in my life.

- Jordan